Soybean-derived blue photoluminescent carbon dots

Biomass-derived carbon dots (CDs) are biocompatible and have potential for a variety of applications, including bioimaging and biosensing. In this work, we use ground soybean residuals to synthesize carbon nanoparticles by hydrothermal carbonization (HTC), annealing at high temperature, and laser ablation (LA) in a NH4OH solution. The carbon nanoparticles synthesized with the HTC process (HTC-CDs) exhibit photoluminescent characteristics with strong blue emission. The annealing of the HTC-processed carbon particles in the range of 250 to 850 °C causes a loss of the photoluminescent characteristics of the CDs without any significant change in the microstructure (amorphous structure) of the carbon particles. The LA processing of the annealed HTC-processed carbon particles introduces nitrogen-containing surface-functional groups and leads to the recovery of the photoluminescent features that are different from those of the HTC-CDs and dependent on the fraction of nitrogen in the surface-functional groups. The photoluminescence of both the HTC-CDs and LA-CDs is largely due to the presence of N-containing surface-functional groups. The quantum yield of the LA-CDs is more constant than that of the HTC-CDs under continuous UV excitation and does not exhibit a significant reduction after 150 min of excitation. The methods used in this work provide a simple and green strategy to introduce N-surface-functional groups to carbon nanoparticles made from biomass and biowaste and to produce stable photoluminescent CDs with excellent water-wettability.